Greens on gas exports: Not so fast
By: Talia Buford and Darren Goode and Bob King March 6, 2014 08:41 PM EST

The drive to weaken Vladimir Putin though natural gas exports is meeting a green backlash.

Environmentalists and their congressional allies scoffed Thursday at a mounting campaign on the Hill to hasten U.S. gas exports, saying there’s no reason to think gas shipments would weaken Russia’s leverage over Europe’s energy supply. But exporting American shale gas could drive up prices for consumers and manufacturers at home, they warned, while encouraging the spread of fracking and lessening incentives for power companies to abandon coal-fired power.

The shipments of liquefied natural gas might not even make it to Europe, Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) argued, agreeing with some energy policy experts who said exporters would most likely fetch higher prices in Asia.

“It’s going to help China more than it helps Ukraine,” Markey said on the floor Thursday, after filing a bill that would require the Energy Department to consider factors like the effect on consumers before approving gas exports.

Athan Manuel, the Sierra Club’s senior director in Washington, called the use of the Ukraine card in the gas debate “a red herring.”

“Exporting LNG is no quick fix to this international crisis,” Manuel said. “All this aside, many of the proponents of LNG exports continue their willful ignorance about the dangers of gas fracking to American families’ health, land, water and air.”

“The main beneficiaries of allowing more exportation of fossil fuels would be the companies that produce those fossil fuels,” said an opinion piece published Thursday on the environmental website Grist.

Gas supporters showed no signs of giving up, however. Rep. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.) led Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee in filing a bill Thursday that would order the approval of a host of export applications awaiting Energy Department approval. That came on top of bills filed earlier in the week by Rep. Ted Poe (R-Texas), Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio) and Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.), Gardner’s rival in this year’s Colorado Senate race.

The House Foreign Affairs Committee also weighed in on the issue Thursday when it attached pro-export language to a resolution calling for tougher action against Russia. But the committee first engaged in an often-snarky debate that exposed Congress’s long-running divisions about whether gas exports would help or hurt the U.S.

Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) scoffed during the committee markup at Poe’s call for gas exports. “My 13-year-old daughter would also like a pony,” Grayson said before Republicans admonished him.

In addition to exports, the final version of the amendment called for European countries to adopt energy efficiency and take other steps to lessen their dependence on Russian gas.

Foreign Affairs member Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) said he worried about the effect of injecting Congress’s typical energy feuds into a foreign policy crisis. “I’m afraid that the addition of this amendment will create division that will be … perceived by the Russians and even the Russian media as a Congress that is not united in support of the Ukrainian people,” he said.

Supporters say exporting gas — or even announcing we intend to unleash the floodgates — would weaken the hand of Russia, which supplies 30 percent of Europe’s gas supply and has twice cut off shipments to Ukraine during earlier disputes. And they say the U.S. has plenty to spare, thanks to the shale boom that has turned the country into a gas powerhouse.

The main problem, export backers say, is a sluggish Energy Department approval process that has so far green-lighted only five plants that could produce and ship liquefied natural gas overseas. The first of those, in Louisiana, won’t be ready until late 2015 at the earliest.

But environmentalists and other skeptics say the years-long process of building the plants makes exports useless as an immediate tool against Putin.

Even worse, they say, exporting gas would increase the price at home. That’s one reason the export proposals have traditionally drawn opposition from manufacturers like Dow Chemical, as well as lawmakers like Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.).

Markey cited Energy Department figures to estimate that if the U.S. approves “just a few more [export] terminals, the spikes in natural gas prices would amount to an additional $62 billion tax on American consumers and businesses each year.” Those added costs would make natural gas less competitive with coal, providing less incentive for power companies to switch from coal to gas for their fuel, he said.

“We should not give away the domestic economic and national security rewards of our natural gas boom and then just hope that the market reduces the risk of international conflicts,” Markey said.

Michael Levi, an energy security expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, noted in an essay Wednesday that Europe has only limited capacity to take additional gas shipments. He added that private companies would generally decide where to ship any exported gas — and they might not necessarily send it where the U.S. government wants.

“The U.S. government doesn’t get to sell gas to anyone; it can create a framework in which commercial entities can sell gas, but after that, it’s up to those businesses to decide where the gas goes,” he wrote. “Similarly, ‘Europe’ doesn’t buy gas — all sorts of European companies do, within European and national regulatory frameworks.”

Kevin Book, managing director of ClearView Energy Partners, agreed that the DOE “doesn’t control the destination.”

“Right now, Asia’s where the money is,” he said.

The debate may not be settled anytime soon. Senate Foreign Relations ranking member Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) told POLITICO he doesn’t expect gas exports to be included in an initial Ukrainian aid package the committee is trying to mark up by Tuesday.

“There are more complexities to it than meet the eye,” he said. “But I think it’s a very, very important element for us to be looking at as we move ahead … in the next several weeks.”